Manny Bustos is an orphan, scrabbling for survival on the streets of Juárez, Mexico. He sleeps in a cardboard box, and fights with boys bigger and older than him for the coins American tourists throw off the bridge between El Paso, Texas, and his town. Across the border, Sergeant Robert S. Locke, Vietnam vet and Army prefect, searches for a way to drown the cries for help of his dead friends, and finds it in Cutty Sark whisky. On the night that Manny dares the crossing, through the muddy shallows of the Rio Grande, past the searchlights and border patrol, in the hopes of a better life, the two meet in an explosive encounter that fills the night with tension and endless possibilities.